The Role of Milk Collecting Centers in Socio-Economic Situation of Dairy Animal Keepers

Most of the poor people in developing countries live in rural areas. Experience shows that in manycountries animal husbandry development and increasing investment specially is a way to challengethe poverty in rural areas. This is obvious that, small producers have key role in dairy markets anddairy development but they have no power to bargain and negotiate for higher prices, access to themarketing, and up to date their knowledge and skills. They have few animals with low milkproduction and low quality. In these situations, cooperatives are best choice to organizingsmallholder milk producers. With such organization smallholder milk producers are able toincrease their competition power. Milk collecting centers as a place to implementing this purposecan play a big role. These centers in the production stage can help smallholder milk producers tohave access to the dairy animals with high quality, feeds, veterinary and other supplies. Thiscenters in the marketing stage, with adopting politics for example punishment and rewards politics,and preparing training courses help to improve milk quality and to reduce milk microbial. Thisarticle investigates the role of milk collecting center to improve smallholder milk producer'ssituation, and their conditions in the Esfahan area.